Marzieh Asadi - Department of Language,Aligoudarz Branch, Islamic Azad University,Aligoudarz, Iran
Reza Ghafarsamar - Associate professor in TEFL, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

This study investigated the learning of complaint strategies from a sociocultural perspective in learner-learner interactions. For this purpose, 14 Iranian intermediate female EFL learners of Englishin one intact class were first divided into two groups of expert and novice based on their scores onPreliminary English Test (PET) and then instructed on the use of complaint strategies for about three weeks. After the instruction, the data were collected by giving each pair of expert-novice a post-test ofdiscourse completion test consisting of six different situations on the use of complaint strategies.Learners were supposed to first discuss the situations in the DCT orally in the form of a conversation and by interaction and reach a final decision on the use of the appropriate complaint strategy and writeit in the DCT post-test. The conversations were audio-recorded to be analyzed in another stage of dataanalysis. The data were analyzed in two stages: in the first stage, data were analyzed quantitatively to find out the learners‟ use of complaint strategies by taking frequencies and percentages. In the second stage, the data were analyzed qualitatively according to the regulatory scales presented by Aljaffrehand Lantolf (1994) and Poehner (2009) to find out patterns of mediations between learners and theirreactions to each others‟ mediations in expert-novice pairs. The first stage of analysis showed that learners preferred to use mostly direct complaint strategies for their effectiveness as well as whenrequesting from their family, close friends, and people of lower-rankings. In contrast, the indirectcomplaint strategies were preferred and used by learners when complaining to higher-ranking people or when they wanted to observe principles of politeness in complaining. The second stage of analysis indicated that learners had more opportunity for interaction when interacting with their peers.Mediation and scaffolding took place not only by experts but also by novices. In a dynamic process of interaction, learners changed roles as novice and experts and this aroused various types of reactions that were again mediations for interaction

Complaint strategies, meditation, scaffolding, sociocultural perspectives